


Death Doesn't Discriminate

by Anonymississippi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Duel To The Death, Hamilton inspired, Multi, Season 2 AU, Some Hollstein, There's no one-to-one character correlation here, most of them are just friends freaking out, some Hollence, some Lawstein, some Zeta Society
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5067214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The white queen and the black are still moving across the board, countering and feinting and castling and taking. So many pawns are lost. The few that survive have proven themselves durable, useful. The remaining rooks stand tall, the knights endure, the bishops chant their wisdom. But it will take a massive sacrifice to set the end game in motion, and Danny knows no one better to make it than herself.</p>
<p>The sun had yet to breach the horizon when the Rook obliterated she who fancied herself the white knight, haphazard pieces shuffling on a spinning board, until the boundaries between the black and white squares were skewed and blurred to ignorance, everything turned grey in the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who Lives Who Dies (Prologue)

“Don’t do this—!”

“Kirsch, calm down.”

“Carm-sexy said big sis over there won’t stop. She’s not going to give up no matter how much dirt you’ve got on her.”

“I know that.”

“Danny, please. Mattie’s bad news bears without the chubby kid in little league! She’s doing this just to scare everybody else. She wants to, like, make an example outta you.”

“Here’s hoping,” Danny smiled tightly, surveying the small depression on the south end of campus they’d commandeered for the proceedings.

In the early moments of pre-dawn, lavender skies and soaked grass took on a new importance, a gravitas that until this very moment she’d not frequently attributed to early Wednesday mornings, so caught up had she been, for all her life, in getting the day started just so she could move on to the next one. Today, there would be a moving on. Just not the kind she’d been accustomed to in her twenty-odd years of living.

“Might as well get this thing started,” Danny said, fiddling with the unfamiliar hammer on the pistol. She shut her eyes and inhaled, tasted wildflowers and dank earth against the minuscule indents on her tongue, another sacred sense she knew she’d miss.

“Make sure LaF turns their back when this goes down. Something about plausible deniability,” she instructed. “And give this to Laura, would you?” she asked, extracting an envelope from her jacket pocket. Kirsch took it reverently, as if in his hands he held a papier-mâché life. His eyes flicked back and forth between LaF and Jeep, standing sentry atop the modest rise with a ramshackle collection of first aid supplies.

“She’s going to hate you for this,” he mumbled, tucking the envelope securely into his back pocket.

“I know.”

“ _I_ hate you for this,” he said, blinking ferociously, jaw clenched to cramping tightness.

Danny wrapped her arms around his big shoulders, his loyal, trustworthy, hapless body, and quieted him gently, carefully. She could almost feel him breaking inside.

“You’re my second for a reason, Kirsch. You’re the only one who could’ve done this, and for that, I’m so thankful. This semester has been hell and, well, I’m just happy I came out of it with a new friend. Forget zones and your Zetas and the Summers. You're a good, _real_ friend, Wilson.”

“D-d-don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say it like it’s goodbye,” he gasped into her shoulder, his tears stinging at her neck in the chill of the morning.

“Oh, can we please get on with this?” Mattie announced from the terminal end of the green.

Perhaps it was the residual French in her, but Mattie had somehow had a tent erected for the dawning slaughter--she'd probably lived since the age of war-as-spectator's-sport. Silver candlesticks dripped with the teardrop leftovers of burned tapers atop a carved oak table. The place settings themselves rivaled regency era finery, serving trays and cutlery and tinkling accents on an elaborate chandelier, misappropriated and unnecessary. It could have been the vampire’s pride or simple fancy; Danny didn’t know Mattie well enough to distinguish between the two. She was almost sad for it.

Carmilla stood beside her sister, spooning halved peaches onto a plate, drizzling a bloody glaze atop the fruits, refusing to look at either Danny or Kirsch. Mattie nimbly speared a peach with a miniature fork and wrapped her mouth around it, sucking gracefully against the tines. She chewed, then dabbed her lips with centuries of practiced manner. Danny watched as Mattie rose smoothly, pushing against her dining chair and placing a gentle hand against her younger sister's shoulder. Words were exchanged, a series of sentences that had Carmilla's nostril twitching, as if she smelled something rotten.

Even after retrieving her sister's pistol, Carmilla, still, would not face Danny.

“One of us has a board meeting at eight a.m. sharp,” Mattie singsonged malevolently, running a practiced hand over Queen Anne's flintlock weapon.

“Okay,” Danny sniffed from the other end of the field, her nose running from the cold air, from the adrenaline, the foresight she wished she didn’t have. “O-o-okay,” she said again, to herself, to the wind, to the shrinking distance between her body and Mattie's as they converged, aged pistols cocked in their twitching grips.

“We’ll count aloud. Traditional procedure, really,” Mattie said distractedly, as if a duel to the death was just another item to check off her to-do list. “Ten paces. Then fire. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Mattie drawled, an ancient hand with nail tips painted fire engine red flicking up the collar of her billowing black trench. “I can already see the phantoms in your eyes.”

Danny blinked, hoping it wasn’t just a pupil blurred by her unshed tears. “I like to think it’s bravery.”

“Foolishness.”

“Tomato, tomahto.”

“We shall see,” Mattie pivoted in her heels, the spikes on her shoes somehow hovering slightly above the terrain, a preternatural vampiric power of keeping one’s feet unsullied.

Danny’s boots were muddied, the leather cracking and the tread worn to smoothness, the sweat from her feet reabsorbed from her cotton socks, turning her toes to icicles of uselessness. She turned in the dew-soaked grass and was instantaneously counting: the steps, the paces, the seconds, her arm maneuvering chest high and then straight up, her pistol reaching heavenward, courage or bravery or idiocy or foolishness summoned in a final moment until—

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine—

She aims her pistol at the sky-

"WAIT!"

TEN-PACES- **FIRE**!


	2. Non-Stop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some time before the events of the prologue...

They had been pouring over the Silas CCR (Code of Campus Regulations) for the better part of four hours. Danny was up to her elbows in dust and manuals, Laura doctoring two paper cuts manifested from one monstrous manuscript intent on inflicting as much damage as possible; whether that be in the form of brain melt or superficial laceration, the pages did not seem to care.

“What about this?” Danny tried, desperate for any sort of progress. “ _No board member may purposefully hinder Silas board procedure, or else be charged with contempt and ousted from the board forthwith_.”

“Ambiguous phrasing at best,” Laura spoke into the crook of her elbow, where she had previously sought refuge once the sticky-side of the band-aid bested her. “How can we prove Mattie is _purposefully hindering_ procedure, when she’s following the Dean’s previously set agendas to a T? If anything, we’re the ones trying to stop the plans from going through.”

“Yeah, okay…” Danny mumbled, turning back to her tome.

They’d found dual copies of the Silas Campus Code at the newspaper office, snatches of the Silas Charter and student handbook referenced throughout. There were, honestly, so many regulations and restrictions, rules and contingencies that no mortal could ever read through the thousands of pages written concerning the University (which was probably the point, really). It had taken longer than they’d have liked to really get down to the grunt work of research, but they’d had to wait for much of the blood staining the manuscripts to dry first. Those students at the newspaper had been pouring over the pages, and, Danny thought grimly, eventually did… _pour themselves over the pages._

She scanned the paragraph again, the black type stretching through the crimson splotch, as if the calligraphy hand-printed on the parchment _demanded_ to be read. Silas, in all of its mystery, held a strange sort of agency that Danny had learned way back in her freshman year never to discount.

She paused over a lengthy bulleted point in the middle of a section on board member duties, those specifically held by the student representative:

  * _The student representative shall endeavor to represent the voice of Silas to the best of his or her abilities. If that voice is silenced, censored, or expurgated by a fellow board member, even though the student does not broke ill will, does not violate the Silas Student Handbook or Charter, nor does he or she misrepresent the university in any way, then Silas University retains the right to exact fair and just recompense for its student representative’s mistreatment. At its core, Silas’s students have always been its most valuable asset; those students should be revered, never curtailed, for they are the very heart of the University itself._



It was, again, quite ambiguous, but perhaps ambiguity could work to their advantage? No ideas forthcoming, Danny called it quits for the afternoon.

“Gonna head back to the lodge,” she said, nudging Laura’s prone form on the desk. “You can go back to your _Scandal_ reruns now.”

“You could say it with a little less snark, you know. You’re starting to sound like Carmilla.”

“Ha!” Danny laughed, strained and short. “Watch all the Netflix you want during downtime, but _some_ of us have grades to record.”

“Grades?” Laura questioned.

“Uhm yeah, Hollis. Lit TA, remember?” Danny said, shoving her mini-library into her backpack.

“You’re still doing that?”

“Of course. That is, if I can keep _my_ grades up; this semester’s proving more challenging than last,” she continued, rising and slinging her pack over her shoulder with a single strap. “Though _Middlemarch_ isn’t the most riveting selection for my upper level classes, especially compared to the weird I encounter on the daily, now. But, if I keep _my_ grades up, I can keep grading… I’m hoping my résumé come graduation will be worth the hell I put myself through now. Why, you think I could be doing something better?” Danny shot back, teasing and benign.

“Oh, no, I just know about you and all your free time," Laura responded lightly. "What with combating the evil fish monster stuck in a campus hole. And the evil corporation attempting to excavate said monster from its subterranean prison. And your dealing with the evil elder sibling vetoing every suggestion you and the board make,” Laura finished, reaching for a TARDIS mug gone cold.

Danny shrugged her response, the backpack suddenly weightier against her shoulder than it once was. “They haven’t suspended classes, someone’s got to champion even the fragments of normal.”

“Whatever happened to Perry?” Laura rightly asked.

“All the stuff she saw last semester? This semester? Then a bloody abdominal threat? Laura, we’re doing good if Perry’s not _catatonic_ , let alone normal.”

“So that leaves you?” Laura again, critical and concerned all at once.

“Hey, it could be a lot worse,” Danny offered a half-smile. “Sure, grading all the essays sucks, but at least I don’t have to test the structural integrity of any projects my students turn in. I’ve heard some horror stories from the architecture TAs about castle moats and war bridges.”

“I just… I just can’t believe you’re keeping up with all of that. And doing the student representative thing, and the Summers—not to mention all this time helping me.”

“It’s just time management, Laura.

“Somehow I think it’s more than that," Laura shifted in her seat and shook her head, as if a physical jostling would settle all of her thoughts in her brainspace. "You do all this stuff like—like you know you’ve only got so much time to accomplish it.”

“Well,” Danny said dismissively, “Graduation looms.”

“It’s not just graduation,” Laura accused, and _hell no_ was Danny getting into this conversation right now.

“Don’t worry about it, Laura. You just keep plugging away,” Danny said, pausing at the doorjamb. “I’ll catch you tomorrow, see if the Campus Code yields any better results.”

“Okay…” Laura said warily, chewing the inside of her cheek. “Really, Danny. Thanks again!”

“Anytime, Hollis. Oh, see ya, Perry,” Danny said, slipping through the Dean’s old quarters and heading out to the uproarious campus.

“Where’s Danny heading off to?” Perry asked.

“She’s got to go grade some essays. Though how she’s gonna do that with a lodge full of hostile Summers breathing down her neck…”

“She’s remarkable, that one,” Perry commented, inclining her head to the side.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Laura replied warmly.

“Strong, quite bright, dependable, loyal to a fault…”

“Are you making a bid for the Danny Lawrence fan club chair or something?” Laura teased. “I thought Carmilla occupied that post.”

“Not a chance, _cupcake_ ,” came the drowsy retort from the other side of the curtain.

“Oh no, I was simply… never mind. It doesn’t matter,” Perry continued, shaking away an idea. “But I wanted to show you this," Perry said, unraveling an aged parchment closer to disintegration than usefulness. "I found it in the research those newspaper kids had collected.”

“Which part? This—”

“Right here,” Perry said, indicating a single passage in faded script.

“Trial by combat?” Laura questioned. “Is that a smudge? Does it say _conflict_ or—”

“No, definitely combat, I’m afraid,” Perry answered. She smoothed the parchment flat on the desk delicately, gingerly, as if the document held the answers to every conceivable Silas conundrum.

“There’s no one on the board strong enough to take on Mattie," Laura objected. "She’s a _vampire_ , Perry.”

“Yes, of course, but the addendum added after the campus fire from the 20s stipulates that it must be _fair proceedings_ , so we could make the argument that there has to be appropriate stakes for both. Danny saved that list of ways to take care of a vampire last semester, we could just… expand it.”

“You’re suggesting that we kill Mattie?” Laura whispered, dubious, twitching her head to get a better look at the curtain behind her, Carmilla likely dozing beyond. "Because I am definitely _not_ on board with that. I'm honestly surprised you'd even suggest it."

“I doubt we’d ever get that far,” Perry conceded. “But if Danny wins, Mattie would no longer have veto power.”

“I don’t know how I feel about offering Danny up like some lamb for the slaughter.”

“Danny’s hardly a lamb," Perry said, gesturing vaguely about, as if Danny's six-foot fighter frame would materialize before the conferring pair. "She’ll agree to it. She’d do anything for you.”

Laura hesitated, rubbing three fingers into her temple and trying desperately not to read more into that statement than she should. “Look Perry, Danny’s my best friend, our closest campus ally; do we really intend to—”

“She _has to!_ ” Perry insisted, so un-Perry-like that Laura shrank back in her seat; Laura noted the _chink_ of a pulled curtain sliding across a pole, Carmilla undoubtedly standing watch just beyond the police tape. “That is…” Perry quieted, a lid atop a pot at a roiling boil: “What other option do we have, Laura? You heard her! She lives like… like she’s running out of time. We can’t expect her to keep this up forever.”

“She’s been doing a pretty good job of it so far,” Laura muttered.

“Humph,” Carmilla added, turning languidly from her perch near the police tape. “She’ll burn out soon enough. They always do.”

“Not helping,” Laura snapped.

“Didn’t intend to,” Carmilla said to the book in front of her.

“Just think it over,” Perry said again. “We’ve got to give Silas its best chance. And that chance might just be Danny.”

“Okay…” Laura hesitated, eyes swimming through the texts, words rearranging themselves on the page before her. It could have just as easily been fatigue as magic. Neither surprised her anymore. “I’ll think about it, Perry.”

“Good,” Perry said with a head nod of bouncing curls. “I’ll get you some more cocoa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I see, a bad moon risin', I see, trouble on the way...
> 
> Reading back over the first sentence of this chapter and the Credence reference was just too good not to acknowledge. (Also, completely unintentional, and is likely dating my musical tastes). Especially with everyone begging for werewolf Danny despite canon. Because 'bad moon'. Get it? Because werewolf?
> 
> ...
> 
> I'll just leave that there and ask for any feedback you care to provide. Cheers!


	3. Stay Alive

“This is a mistake,” Carmilla seethed, following Mattie into the main room of the Dean’s mansion. Mattie crossed to the wet bar, twisting the cap with crystal etchings of lachrymose spirits off the top of the Scotch decanter. She prepared herself and Carmilla a serving, several fingers of alcohol with a single ice cube poured and plopped into the glassware with careless grace.

“I’d hardly call a single malt Glenffidich aged half a century a mistake, darling,” Mattie said, handing Carmilla’s glass off as she strutted over the carpet, settling herself into a high-backed chair in front of the fireplace. “Much better than those Neanderthals’ meager attempts at microbrewing on the back lot of the Habsburg plaza.”

There were no flames behind the grate—merely ash and white-washed logs, black soot from evenings past when Carmilla remembered curling up with Laura, reading, at ease, snuggling into comfortable assurances of mutual affection; there was admiration, love in there, all tied up and presented to her like a major offering on a milestone birthday. She’d been murdered on her eighteenth year’s party, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the present had been snatched away, that the little mortal journalist had begged her to change and broken a heart she no longer possessed.

Yet even now, Carmilla was still doing all in her power to protect her, even if that extended to protection by association.

“The duel, Mattie. Big Red’s not a bad shot.”

“Those Summers have been overestimating themselves since the days of Cyrene,” Mattie volleyed. “Her sororal ancestors would cringe at the notion of what their tribes have been reduced to. I’m honestly doing them a favor.”

“Taking away their strongest member?” Carmilla asked.

“Culling the herd, pet. It’s not like she’s remained in the good graces of the group, what with her incessant meddling,” Mattie took an appreciative sip of the drink and puckered her cheeks, rolling the hinted flavors of spice and current over her tongue, coating her taste buds. Mattie was, if anything, refined in her actions. Which certainly explained the dueling. Even in her killing, she expressed some form of artistry.

“The Summers should have ended centuries ago,” Mattie continued. “These surviving strains are parasites, feeding off the ideologies of a group that, originally, wasn’t all that great to begin with. I’ve had one too many run-ins with those women over the years, none at all pleasant.”

“But offing the student representative is bound to raise some eyebrows; there’s only so many ways you can spin it and not have Laura tout the headline: ‘Board Member Kills Stellar Student in Illegal Duel’,” Carmilla said, sipping as nonchalantly at her drink as she could.

She could read Mattie and Mattie could read her: they both knew that Mattie was too close to her, too well-acquainted with her pendulum-swinging moods and roller coaster inclinations to believe her opposition to the duel was purely objective.

“They are hindering procedure,” Mattie said, the pattern of Mother’s cadence echoed in her sister’s tone. “Gingersnap is encouraging students to chain themselves up to parts of campus I’ve been tirelessly trying to cart off to Corvae. There’s only so many student body bodies expendable, and we’re reaching our limit. Taking out a leader might leave a place for a new student representative, but I’d love to see anyone come charging up to take her spot after I put a bullet through that idealistic little brain of hers.”

“You can’t kill her,” Carmilla insisted, reverting her focus to the chilled glass in hand.

“God, not another one,” Mattie huffed, taking a hurried sip of her Scotch. “You don’t even seem to _like_ this one. I can’t comprehend your protest,” she continued, a dramatic little hand flourish added to her ire.

“Mattie, a duel could _kill you both_. I heard you talking about the wooden-tipped bullets—”

“Sweetness, I know you missed out on a good portion of technological innovations—industrial revolution and what-have-you—but wooden-tipped bullets? Please,” Mattie cackled, a musical tittering at odds with the matter of the exchange. “There are several ways to dispose of our kind, but manmade technologies don’t stand a chance against enchantment and ritual. It’s like you’ve learned nothing in nearly 400 years.”

“I’ve learned that humans are smarter than you give them credit for,” Carmilla countered, placing her glass aside. She leaned forward on her leather-encased knees and propped her chin on her fists. “They might be keeping something from you.”

“Trust you to give them more credit than they’re due,” Mattie said, raising a glass conspiratorially.

A knock sounded, shivery and high, like a snare drum tumbling down a staircase. The door to the apartment creaked, and a wary, eager, determined set of eyes popped out from behind the frame.

“Yo, uh… scary vampire ladies?” Kirsch asked, peeping around. “Can I come in?”

“Nothing’s ever stopped you before,” Carmilla settled back against the loveseat, extending her arms across the back of the furniture. Mattie’s dismissal left her disgruntled, Kirsch’s intrusion curious.

“I’m, uh—supposed to come ask for an apology,” Kirsch said.

“An apology?” Mattie sing-songed, swinging her glass in hand, as if waving a fetch toy before an agitated Labrador. “I do hope you don’t mean from me.”

“D-Bear says if you apologize, then this doesn’t have to go down,” Kirsch shifted his weight from toe to toe, shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

“And why would I apologize? I’ve done nothing wrong,” Mattie answered.

“But, you did—”

“Beefcake,” Carmilla interrupted, not wanting Kirsch’s head to be featured as the next paperweight for their late Mother’s desktop. “How about you and I take a walk?”

“Please,” Mattie insisted, settling back and crossing her feet at the ankles, the spikes of her Manolo Blahniks piercing the puffiness of the carpet underfoot. “His ineptitude is spoiling the atmosphere.”

“In-epi-pen what?”

“Come on, nitwit,” Carmilla said, dragging Kirsch by the collar and through the front doorway. “Just because you’re caught in a bad bromance with the ginger giant does not make it safe for you to go criticizing centuries-old beings.”

“Bromance?” Kirsch asked, lugged along like some toddler on a baby-harness. “That like, rhymes with romance… with Danny, right?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Carmilla shoved him against the stairwell, his spine cracking one of the weaker paneled boards.

“Umph!”

“Now, what suicide mission did Red Robin send you on this time?” Carmilla said, leaning forward into Kirsch’s space, only a half-hearted attempt at coming off as imposing. She just couldn’t seem to get into it— she was unexpectedly preoccupied with Danny’s deranged acceptance of a _duel to the fucking death._

Kirsch straightened to his impressive human height and righted his popped fratastic collar. “I’m Danny’s second,” he said, with a significant degree of misunderstood pride. “I’m supposed to get Mattie to apologize.”

“She’s not going to,” Carmilla answered.

“So you’re her second?”

“I’m her _sister_.”

“Well, as like, her _sister_ , do you think you could get her to apologize?” Kirsch asked.

“Do you think you could get Danny to?”

“D-Bear’s not my sister. At least, I _definitely_ hope not. ‘Cause like—”

“Focus, Beefcake,” Carmilla snapped in front of his face.

“No,” Kirsch finally answered. “I don’t guess Danny’d say sorry.”

“Then you see what I’m dealing with here,” Carmilla answered, about to lay into the obtuse specimen before her, one hand raised in a fist—

“Hey guys!” Laura strolled around the corner, a quirked little half smile on her face, a bag of un-popped microwave popcorn in one hand and the Silas Student Handbook in another. “How’d the board meeting go? I’m about to meet up to go over details with Danny.”

“Fine,” Kirsch said.

“Shit-show.” Carmilla spoke over the Zeta pinned to the wall.

“Huh?” Laura asked, rearranging her armload of materials.

And she was right _there_ , close enough to embrace and protect and just… have. The remnants of Laura’s clumsiness were so damned _endearing_ Carmilla felt her torso constrict, as if a python had wrapped itself around her ribcage. A permanent python, it seems, for the tightness in her chest hadn’t let up since Laura had called it all off in a tearful hissy fit so commonly _human_. The break up, though messy, didn’t quite stop Carmilla’s wanting.

“T-t-t-otally fine,” Kirsch stuttered, in response to Laura’s query about the board. “I mean, Mattie’s still throwing uber-shade at the students, thinking we don’t know Corvae’s about to go all Hannibal Lector on our livers or whatever. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Nope. Just business as usual. Ask D-bear. Smooth-sailing,” Kirsch punctuated his excessively chipper reply with a whistle and a slick little hand motion that landed atop Laura’s skull, resulting in a dismissive head pat that Carmilla (using all of her supernatural restraint and the forbearance centuries of living had afforded her) ignored with a Saint’s patience.

“Seriously?” Laura asked, turning to Carmilla for confirmation.

Kirsch’s widening eyes and headshake were overkill; the simpleton would not win an award for subtlety.

“Do I look like a secretary?” Carmilla snarked. “I’ve got better things to do than take minutes at a board meeting, cupcake.”

“Oh,” Laura said, confusion eventually overrun by insult. “Guess it wasn’t a big enough ‘shit show’ to hold your interest.”

“Plenty of things interest me. Just not your crusade,” Carmilla quipped, hoping the sting would get Laura out of the hallway and cool her ribcage of that ceaseless burning feeling.

“Fine! Kirsch, fight the good fight!” Laura said, turning directly on her heel and exiting the hallway.

“I’m guessing from your less-than-understated expression that—”

“D-Bear doesn’t want Laura to know about the duel,” Kirsch finished.

“Not surprising,” Carmilla answered, rubbing a trio of agitated fingers against her temple, digging a bit into her closed eye. Perhaps she could rub out the stupidity of the two noble fools with a little well-applied pressure.

“Neither one of them is going to back down, you know,” Carmilla answered.

“Then we gotta settle on some place for this to go down,” Kirsch said. “Danny said those are the rules. If they don’t apologize, we gotta decide where and when.”

“So she’s adopting the rules of formal dueling?” Carmilla asked, intrigued. “Cute, but it won’t save her.”

“Danny said something about a courtesy,” Kirsch explained. “Respect for Silas tradition.”

“Mattie could give two shits about Silas tradition.”

“I know this place,” Kirsch barreled on, ignorant of the implications of actually settling upon a location. Time and setting only made the encounter all the more real, all the more irreversible. “It’s this little foresty kinda area at the bottom of this ridge in a glade on the South end of campus, near the woods. There’s these hills on either side, would help us keep people from interfering, and Mattie and Danny can set up at the ends of it. It’s perfect.”

“Duels are traditionally held on high-ground.”

“Oh,” Kirsch said, perplexed. “Well, I could find another spot—”

“Again, two shits about tradition,” Carmilla continued. “Though if we’re to do this half-assed location-wise, we can at least do it at the proper time. Dawn. Friday morning, since Xena seems completely content to expend the final remnants of her usefulness on this slaughter.”

“I heard Friday morning,” Kirsch repeated, trying to follow the trajectory of information and insults and coming up… unsurprisingly short.

“Go on back, Lieutenant Fuzz,” Carmilla instructed, releasing Kirsch from his trapped spot against the stairwell. “Give the set information to your General and see if she comes to her senses and backs out. Be sure and tell her Laura will never forgive her for it.”

Kirsch blinked dully, then let his head thud back against wall. “I already did,” he sighed, shutting his eyes briefly.

“It is sickening how hung up on that martyr you are.”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s gonna do what she’s gonna do,” Kirsch replied, hands back in his pockets, shoulders shrugged in resigned understanding. “Whether I try to stop her, or you try, or Laura tries… it doesn’t matter. That’s just Danny, y’know?”

“Unfortunately.”

Kirsch chewed on his lip for a bit, then pushed himself off of the wall with determined joviality. “’Mkay, one job down. Now I gotta go find science-bro. We’re supposed to have a doctor for this show-down.”

“Frankenstein’s creator is hardly a doctor.”

“LaF’s close enough we can get on short notice. Plus the infirmary staff has been on leave for like—ever.”

“Ask yourself if that’s a coincidence, beefcake,” Carmilla instructed. “Danny’s really hung up on these rules, isn’t she?”

“She says there’s a lot riding on this. Control of the whole board, so she wants to do it right.”

“Sure,” Carmilla said, catching a glimpse of red hair on the desk stool beside Laura. Seems like the Ginger Giant was getting good at slipping in unnoticed. Carmilla could hear through the walls, the telltale strains of a lie about the board proceedings:

“How was the meeting?” Laura asked.

“Fine. Mattie’s still a tyrant, so nothing new there,” Danny’s reply.

“Any progress?”

“Some.”

“Care to let me in on it?”

“I’ll let you know if anything big crops up. Gimme some of that popcorn.”

…

…

…

“Hollis, how long did you microwave this?”

“I followed the package instructions. The Dean’s got the microwave set to laser status or something.”

“This tastes like carbon.”

“You don’t have to eat it if you’re going to complain, you know.”

“Hollis, you are totally helpless.”

Carmilla could barely stomach the domesticity, as well as the duplicity of it all. Two idiot human girls, playing at real-world investigation when supernatural powers were shifting all the pieces about. And one was straight-up lying while the other (Carmilla hoped) lanquished in all sorts of denial.

* * *

 

Danny lay very still, keeping her breaths even, as the intruder rummaged about the room. Danny allowed her hand to move in creeps toward the Summer’s standard-issue dagger she kept tucked under her pillow. Of course it would be her luck to be murdered in her sleep the night before she was to be killed in a duel to the death.

Typical Silas.

She had stayed over at the mansion tonight, booted out of the Summer lodge; she’d taken one of the thousands of guests rooms after Laura had checked out on the couch downstairs, the Silas Student Handbook draped over Laura’s tiny frame like a blanket of paragraphs.

“I know you’re awake.”

The source of the gravelly mezzo had stopped moving; Danny flicked the bedside lamp on beside her and sat up, tossing the dagger to the unoccupied side of the mattress.

“What is this? Sabotage from the opposing side?” Danny asked, voice thick and clotted from deep slumber.

“You sleep easy the night before you kill?” Carmilla asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Danny said, at which Carmilla inclined her head in conciliation. “Though I think we both know… you don’t really have anything to worry about.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Carmilla shrugged mechanically, ambling about the room, trailing an idle finger over black lace doilies and lacquered boxes that likely held the cut up hearts of saints, enemies of the Dean whose punishments for disobedience were lacerated ventricles and a gaping chest wound—as opposed to a half century sequestered away, forced to confront crippling taphophobia by experiencing it first-hand. Danny knew her own body wouldn’t be buried. This time tomorrow she’d likely be ashes on the wind… it was comforting, in a fatalistic, complicated sense.

“Even with the wooden-tipped bullets, I feel like I’m coming out of this at a significant disadvantage,” Danny spoke carefully. “And with Mattie having been groomed by your mom for vengeance in the formal codes of warfare, well… she’s not the one looking to come out of this with a hole in her heart.”

“I never said I was worried about Mattie,” Carmilla told the wall.

“Seriously?” Danny snorted, incredulous and groggy. Sitting atop a quilt stitched with scenes of ritualistic beheadings, in a room with more pointy ends hanging from the walls than rounded curves, she could hardly stomach Carmilla’s cryptic restraint, let alone figure what was churning about in Vampira’s head. She didn’t particularly care to, given all the hell Carmilla and Mattie had put her through this semester for taking that student representative position.

“Get out, Fangface,” Danny said, shifting down against the mattress, turning her back on Carmilla.

“You don’t think I could care for you?”

…

…

…

“Not really,” Danny answered honestly, all too aware of Carmilla’s seductive reputation, her ability to get unsuspecting girls to fall under her thrall until she got what she wanted from them.

“I think you’re so in love with Laura that seeing the look on her face tomorrow when she finds out your sister killed me is going to break you into a million tiny little pieces,” Danny spoke to the darkness, yanked the covers up closer to her chest. “You think fifty years underground was bad? Betrayed by the girl you loved? Laura finds out you knew, and it’s like you’re doing the exact same thing to her.”

Danny felt the bed dip behind her and she stiffened, wondering if in these wee hours Carmilla felt more reckless, untethered by Laura’s expectancies such that a midnight snack in the form of a pale redhead might be forgivable given the right rhetoric.

_She was getting ready to die anyway, cupcake._

“You’d be as much at fault as I am. Of keeping secrets,” Carmilla protested, but then: “I’m already not enough for her.”

“No, you’re not,” Danny said, tears brimming in the darkness. “But you got her anyway.”

“She expects me to be her hero. To save you, her, this place…” Carmilla scoffed, and Danny felt a hand curl around her waist, pull her large frame back with a strength she was unaccustomed to.

The proximity was a violating comfort when Danny considered her final hours, Carmilla’s forward tactility unexpected but not unwelcome. The vampire was cool behind her, the blankets warm above her, and the unshed saltiness at her eyelids stinging, burning hotter than Mercury.

“I won’t— _can’t_ be that,” Carmilla spoke quietly at her ear, her small chest vibrating against Danny’s shoulderblades. “What’s one more sin of omission—of inaction—in my file of disappointment for her?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Danny muttered, turning over to face the vampire, so seemingly unsure, her usually disdainful voice reduced to a tremulous murmur.

“She _chose_ you,” Danny whispered.

“Ha!” Carmilla nearly snorted, puffs of iron and rusty breaths hitting Danny’s face, nostrils flaring in distaste. “But she _wants_ you, Xena.”

“But she _chose_ you, no matter how misguided and bizarre that choice might seem to me,” Danny answered sadly.

She hadn’t kicked Carmilla out of bed yet, which—end of her life?—more curious things had occurred at Silas than one hero on a bender spending her last breathing hours with a vampire. Honestly, she’d take what company she could get.

“And I would never take away her right to choose,” Danny explained.

“She broke up with me.”

“I’m not your counselor, Dead Girl,” Danny said, but Carmilla’s nails against her forearm forced further exposition: “Look, Laura loves me, bits and pieces because of a friendship, but she’s just a freshman. A 19-year-old who is so _in love with you_ , but she can’t get her shit together because her world is literally crumbling around her. Can you just cut her some slack?”

“Not when she’s manipulating her friends into killing my family.”

“Laura doesn’t have the heart or the guile for manipulation. You saw how brilliantly she attempted to lure you into a trap last semester. I’m honestly surprised you fell for it.”

“Suppose I was too far gone to recognize the tells, the strings so obviously being pulled,” Carmilla countered. “A bit like you.”

“How do you figure that?” Danny asked.

“You die tomorrow, that leaves Mattie in charge—the exact thing you and Laura don’t want. But you seem so dead set on getting yourself _dead_ , it makes me suspect you have something else up your sleeve.”

Danny dared not answer, her breath hitching as she felt Carmilla’s forehead brush her own.

“Tell me,” Carmilla whispered angrily, clutching Danny’s bicep with the power of the hydraulic Jaws of Life.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Danny lied terribly. “I’m a fair shot. I could beat Mattie in the duel.”

“No, you can’t,” Carmilla insisted. “So if you know something none of the rest of us do, and Mattie dies…” Carmilla trailed off, shifting away from Danny on the bed, the tense intimacy collapsing under the weight of her suspicions. “There are still several top-tier players in the game. Removing pieces from the board doesn’t mean you’re at an advantage, it just forces a change in strategy.”

“Since when are you a tactician?” Danny asked, wondering if her eyes could adjust quickly enough to the darkness for her to grab a stake or pointy-ended weapon from the wall should Carmilla choose to drop the niceties and go rogue. It was frankly weird, Carmilla curling up for a chat instead of lunging at her neck and draining her dry before Danny’d even had the chance to load her pistol. The disorientation mounted with every reply.

“I’ve been around for a very long time,” Carmilla continued. “This whole situation reeks of interference.”

“Mattie’s the one who issued the challenge,” Danny bit back.

“She was baited.”

“Yeah, and she _took_ it.”

…

…

…

“So… you wanted her to challenge you?” Carmilla asked, confusion evident from her tone. “Danny, I—”

“I know you don’t _get_ it Carmilla, but it’s something I have to do,” Danny turned skywards, the tears finally flowing freely.

“No, I—”

“You think you’ve got more pull in this than you do. You’ve already made it very clear that you’d rather stand over on the sidelines, but that’s not _me_ , okay?” Danny gasped quietly, resigning herself to death. “And that’s not Laura, either. You know that, and if you would just try to see it from our side… Just because some of us still have hope, still believe that the world is worth fighting for, believe in something bigger—”

“Danny!”

“What?!” Danny nearly choked, shoving the heels of her palms into her eye sockets and wiping frantically, wondering, not for the first time in her life, if real heroes cried as much as she did, alone in her bed at night.

…

…

…

“Please don’t kill my sister,” Carmilla answered, sidling closer, clutching desperately at Danny’s shirt. “Without Laura… she’s all I have left.”

“I… I can’t promise that,” Danny answered turning to discover that Carmilla, in her preferred night, backlit by an open window full of stars, was crying, too.

“Somehow I knew that,” Carmilla answered.

“Then why are you here? Why aren’t you with Mattie?”

…

…

…

Carmilla tucked her chin into Danny’s neck, her long lashes sweeping against the flesh there, against the resilient pulse pounding in Danny’s carotid.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Danny confessed, placing her hand against Carmilla’s shoulder, pulling her close.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, either,” Danny lied again. “But… I…” she sighed, and succumbed to her fatigue, shutting her crying eyes as death fell to sleep beside her. “I’m scared.”

“Yes. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t,” Carmilla answered, either kissing or nudging or biting Danny’s neck in a warning hedging on affection.

“Don’t tell Laura,” Danny said.

“No,” Carmilla agreed. “Never.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Falalalalah, Lawstein goggles on, guys. Critique always appreciated!


	4. Come Back to Bed, That Would Be Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hour before it all goes to hell.

“You didn’t sleep any?” Danny asked.

She pulled her jeans over her hips, popped the button through the slit, and zipped the material together, deftly maneuvering over the side of the bed in the pitch of the early morning.

“I’m usually awake this time of night anyway,” Carmilla replied from the bed, lying lazily on one arm, surveying Danny’s routine.

Danny had set her alarm with the name “Death Dawning,” which, in her grimmer sensibilities, seemed more humorous than it should have, given the agenda for the day.

“You didn’t just watch me sleep like some creeper, did you?” Danny asked, pausing to hover over Carmilla’s face.

She slipped her dagger out from Carmilla’s pillow and glared down at the girl in the dark, still, even after a few hours spent in her embrace, unable to get a hold on just what the vampire was thinking, how she justified last night’s actions against this morning’s impending events. Danny sheathed the piece into a hip holster and set to braiding her tangled hair, pausing only when she felt foreign, cold fingers lacing themselves into her locks and weaving them into pattern. Perched on the edge of the bed like a child before her first day of preschool, she wondered at the progression that had led her to this still, unfortunate moment.

“No,” Carmilla, insisted, tightening Danny’s red hair into place.

She looped strand over ringlet with practiced ease, as if she had been performing the ritual for hundreds of years, as if her entire teenagerdom had been spent perfecting the twisted chignon to encapsulate feminine timidity, or whatever. Danny nearly smiled, imagining Carmilla’s history.

“I did count your heartbeats, though,” Carmilla said.

“Bullshit,” Danny insisted, a simper spreading despite herself.

“You know it,” Carmilla replied, and Danny imagined her smiling back.

“Will I see you on the field?”

“I’m Mattie’s representative, apparently. Another role I did not agree to fill.”

“Sorry to put you under so much stress,” Danny answered, wincing as Carmilla tugged none too gingerly at her hair.

“Hey,” Carmilla insisted, pulling tightly at the tie she’d wrapped around the end of Danny’s braid. “It isn’t exactly a walk in the park for me, Xena.”

“I know,” Danny confessed, double-checking the clock on her phone, trying to forget the feeling of Carmilla’s fingers, anyone’s fingers, running over her scalp.

She recalled Laura’s comforting pats to her arm. Kirsch’s exuberant bear-hugs. LaF’s shoulder nudges when she said something clever and Mel’s swats when she did something impressive, much to the chagrin of her fellow Summers.

Touch… she’d definitely miss it.

“I want to go say goodbye to Laura,” Danny said, rising from the edge of the mattress.

“You’re gonna freak her out like that?” Carmilla asked. "After you two sat there and decided not to take this route?"

"Don't, please," Danny said, fumbling in the dark for her jacket. "I already feel bad enough...she didn't want the trial by combat, not after we talked it out. But it's our only plan."

"I hate to reference your own logic, Red Rover, but just because a bad plan is your only plan doesn't mean you should do it."

"Something's got to break. We can't keep sitting here in limbo, letting your sister romp all over us," Danny shuffled about, second thoughts plaguing her in the bedroom, Carmilla's logic both frustrating and undeniable. It didn't matter. Couldn't matter. This was the only way: "Listen, they don't have a plan, they just hate mine. Luckily, I've got the means to pull it off without Laura knowing."

"So you're just going to lie to her?" Carmilla charged, smug and resentful. "Go down and say goodbye like everything's okay, after everything she went through last semester?"

“She'll be okay," Danny tried saying it out loud, hoping that vocalizing it would help her believe it. "She's... she's tougher than she looks. Plus, she's got you."

Danny threw her backpack across one shoulder and gathered up her letterman, tossed it over her arm. She could hear Carmilla emerging behind her, whether to hold her down or hug her... well, Danny could rightly expect either at this point.

"I’ll write her,” Danny amended, chewing uncertainly at the inside of her cheek, tossing the braid over her shoulder to test its resiliency. She couldn’t have fly-aways obstructing her view when she aimed an ancient pistol at an undead administrator.

“You do that, Red,” Carmilla continued, sliding from the bed, stretching, running clawed fingers through her own black tresses. “I hate to say goodbye.”

“No, you don’t,” Danny checked her.

“Please,” Carmilla scoffed. “I’m tired of having other people tell me what I feel. I say I’ll miss you and _I will_ , Gingersnap. Mostly the fact I won’t have a consistent annoyance to contend with on the daily.”

“Gee, thanks,” Danny said soberly, crossing to exit the bedroom.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to get you to forget this, is there?” Carmilla asked, stubbornly refusing to look at Danny.

Carmilla fingered the hem of the eyelet fabric on the curtains, cataloging her precious stars instead of the diminishing human life of her frenemy. Danny would have expected nothing less from the being who’d spent the previous night wrapped around her body like a fickle lover, whispering quiet affirmations when she thought Danny’d been truly dozing; Carmilla refused to divulge any comforting lies or provide any acknowledgement of their situation; no verbal reassurance despite her intimate actions. There had been feather-soft strokes against Danny’s ribcage; the occasional nuzzle at her hairline. Actions, speaking, shouting, _crying_ , louder and brasher and more real than anything unfitting _words_ from Carmilla could ever mean in the long run.

“Can you get your sister to step down?” Danny asked, shuddering in the early chill. “Hand over control of the University to the students and elected representatives? Faculty heads?”

“You know better, Danny,” Carmilla said in that rumbling mezzo, and Danny smiled her understanding.

“Then I suppose you’ve done all you can, Vampira,” Danny grinned, opening the door to the dimly lit hallway. “See you on the dueling ground,” she said, lingering longer than she’d have liked in the doorway of the Dean’s bedroom-turned-torture-chamber.

 

* * *

 

 

“Danny?” Laura mumbled, the crick in her neck from a night spent on the Dean’s loveseat resulting in some premature arthritis of the cervical vertebrae she was sure was irreversible. She cracked her neck and stood, draped an afghan over her shoulders as she propped herself against the doorway, watching Danny write furiously.

“Hey, Laura, go back to bed.”

“What are you doing up this early?”

“I’ve got a meeting. Just need to write something down,” Danny explained, though it didn’t afford much in the way of explanation. “Thought about something we can do with the board.”

“Can’t it wait?”

Danny paused over her page, refusing to well up with the dim lamp light there to give her brimming tears away.

“We’re meeting at dawn,” she said, and was proud that her voice didn’t wobble in the slightest. Proud of a lie… oh Lawrence, how the righteous have fallen.

“Why?” Laura asked, moving closer to the doorway, leaning against the jamb like some groggy little troll with mussed hair and a lopsided expression. Even still partially in a REM cycle, Laura wouldn’t let seemingly strange meeting times sneak under her inquisitive journalist’s radar.

“Well, you know,” Danny stalled, her pen hovering expectantly over the page. “Breakfast, a few other people want to hit the aerobics sessions at the gym come seven, eight a.m. classes—”

“You’re always working,” Laura said. “Grading, or writing… are you going running, too?” Laura asked, ambling closer to Danny.

Danny heard her tread, easily flipped the page over while Laura was yawning.

“What?”

“You’re dressed for a run, right?” Laura said, reaching out to touch her shirt-sleeve and then—and then—drawing back, as she had done with Danny many times before. Laura dropped her hand, instead tugging the afghan fabric back tight around her torso.

She was just so _tiny_. Like a curious burrito, wrapped up in chaos and good intentions.

“Guess you’re running out of time,” Laura commented, glancing at one of the wall clocks, the pitch-fork and torch hands pointing absently at spaces between the numbers, near the five and the three.

“Oh, sure…” Danny said, flicking the end of her braided ponytail over her shoulder.

Sunrise was projected for just after six. Danny had about forty-five minutes to check everything, meet up with Kirsch, and get down to the grove on the south side of campus.

“Go back to sleep, Hollis. You look beat.”

“ _You_ should go back to sleep,” Laura chastised her. She was tired, not nonsensical. “I’m sure you’ve written enough.”

“I might,” Danny lied again. “Fifteen more minutes of shut-eye, maybe. Then I’ll get the run in,” Danny smiled, congenial and bright and everything Laura ever needed, but not quite what she wanted.

“Well,” Laura insisted, clutching the afghan tighter, as if she could enfold Danny and her unsuitable writing habits back into bed with her. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“As well you should,” Danny muttered, nodding easily at Laura’s retreating form.

“I don’t take up too much room on the couch, you know. Plenty of space for you to zone out for a few,” Laura said, zombie-like and sleep-weary. Even disheveled and hazy, she was one of the nicest sights Danny had ever seen.

“Thanks,” Danny grinned, attention caught between her letter and the retreating form of Laura, _Laura_ , the one person she could count on to see the rest of this insane plan through to the end.

“You’re…” she whispered, returning to the blank space, her pen leaking blue ink like clotted blood at a wound. “The best of friends, the best of women,” Danny signed, hoping Laura understood the love and affection, the durability of her admiration for everything Laura hoped to accomplish and, in turn, the desire that Laura would understand all she hoped to achieve with what she was about to do.

The sacrifice she was about to make.

Danny waited fifteen minutes more, heedless of the moon’s descent (she wanted to make sure Laura had fallen back to sleep). Slipping into the side room, she hovered over her friend and kissed Laura’s temple, brushed her nose against the tiny woman’s hairline, and whispered her goodbyes with dry eyes and a peaceful heart.

Stepping out of the mansion, she eased the creaky, heavy oak door into place and put her hand against the panel.

“You love her well, okay, Dead Girl?”

Carmilla nodded from the edge of the roof above her, watching Danny’s retreating form as the first straggling fingers of dawn groped at the horizon, lightening the remains of a deathly dark sky.


	5. The Villain in Your History

“Isn’t this a little much?” Carmilla asked, gesturing at the ostentatious spread before her, Mattie on her left at the head of the table.

“Saint Petersburg with dearest Catie—”

“The _Great_ pain in my ass—”

“Now _that_ was a little much,” Mattie finished, scooping up a braised bit of meat to top off what Carmilla believed was a dish of bloody eggs Benedict.

Lanterns and candles brightened the vaulted canvas tent, the two side flaps breaking a headstrong wind from the west and offering the tent’s inhabitants a modicum of privacy. Pheromones were floating about in the air, Gingersnap’s anxiousness and fear mingling with the scents of lavish breakfast and dripping waxes, the tangy, saliva-inducing taste of red wine settling in the hollow of Carmilla’s throat. Down the field she could just make out Danny and Kirsch moving about, the smell of salt—tears—but not Danny’s.

Stud Muffin finally got it through his skull what was about to happen.

“I suppose I could leave you that duchy in Russia that’s still in my name, should Her Redness succeed in the impossible?” Mattie offered. “And don’t forget about that lovely little oasis in Nairobi!”

“Don’t even joke, Mattie,” Carmilla warned, rising from the table in a frustrated huff.

“You’re right, of course. No jokes, no more delays,” Mattie answered, clearing her throat. “Oh can we please get on with this?” her voice ran down the valley of the clearing, traveling on supernatural soundwaves toward Gingersnap and Beefcake at the opposite end of the field.

Carmilla busied herself at the breakfast buffet against the back canvas wall, pouring blood into coffee and swirling it about, never sipping. She just needed something to do with her hands, having elected _not_ to bring a book with her. Callous, insensitive, yes, but Carmilla was not usually cruel. Especially with Dan—her sister in such dire straits.

“Mircalla,” Mattie called, her aged tone so very measured, so calm.

Carmilla moved over nearer her sister, tapping out an aggressive rhythm on the spoon’s handle as she absentmindedly drizzled blood over Mattie’s food.

“I would never do anything that would put you at risk of loneliness," Mattie reassured her. "You are my sister, my dearest charge. I will not let anyone, especially some brazen Amazon descendant with a death wish, leave you an orphan. You’ll always have me,” Mattie finished succinctly, dabbing delicately at her mouth with the embroidered cloth napkin that matched the place setting.

Mother’s china. Mother’s crystal. Mother’s materials… always Mother’s.

Until Mother died.

And Will died.

And her father, her kindly _Papa_. He died, too.

And Ell—Carmilla didn’t even get to attend Ell’s funeral; she was rather busy, living fifty years through her own.

But Mattie had always been rather good at picking up the pieces of her trauma. Perhaps this dispute could die—die with a miss (Mattie was hardly a markswoman)—and they’d all get out of it.

Unlikely, but possible.

Carmilla turned to retrieve Mother’s pistol. It was laid out on a crushed velvet display inside of a smooth wooden box with an unknown name carved in calligraphy over the top. Her nose wrinkled at the stench of brass and spark, the short burn of pistol powder that reminded her of—never mind what it reminded her of.

“One of us has a board meeting at eight a.m. sharp!” Mattie challenged again.

“Mattie…” Carmilla admonished, handing over the gun.

“What? You want me to _play nice_?” Mattie hissed.

“Just—whatever. Do what you came here to do.”

Just whatever? Just... Just _what_?

Lawrence had dug herself a grave, six feet under and hopefully six feet long, if it was going to accommodate her corpse. There was nothing Carmilla could _do_ , nothing she _wanted_ to do other than hope that the entire situation would resolve itself. It was not her place to interfere; she’d already made her arguments, talked it out on Mattie’s behalf with Kirsch the requisite number of times. She just wanted it to _end_. She didn’t know how, couldn’t think, couldn’t begin to articulate what she wanted when her thoughts were as jumbled as those splices of video, haphazardly shuffled into place as Laura constructed her little Silas narrative.

If she could, she’d rewrite her complicit attitude; she’d rewrite her involvement, burn the tapes or files or USBs that captured her participation in this whole story up til now. She wanted, desperately, to erase herself from the plot and let the players continue without having to worry, without having to be _involved_.

That’s what she wanted.

But how to say it, when she could hardly think it?

And if this, this misunderstanding and aim for noninvolvement... if this was what was wracking her brain, she could only guess what was happening for Gingersnap.

Carmilla turned from her thoughts to the field. The duel had commenced; and with the pacing, the dropping of her organs from her abdomen. She wasn’t supposed to _care_ —

Six—

But Danny had her—

Seven—

—hand moving toward the—

Eight—

—sky. She's not going to—

Nine—

—fire.

Number TEN-PACES- **FIRE**!

 

* * *

 

 

Oh, no.

I’ve thought this out before, death, seen it coming for a few days, but face to face, nanoseconds away, it’s so different than I imagined.

Is this really how I go out of it all?

At Silas... with a bro at my back and two sisters, not _my_ sisters, looming before me with all of their treachery?

What if this is a mistake? What if I misread the text? What if I needed to go farther, farther into the rules, farther in my studies… farther in life? Up the hill, with the students, insurgents, farther, in their armor, farther, keep working harder—What if by accepting Mattie’s challenge, it negates the whole agreement?

Wow, that sunrise is blinding, coming over the greenhouse arbor.

— _the right to exact fair and just recompense—_

Silas promised in the Charter.

Trades of equal value, right?

How is twenty years any comparison to centuries?

Mattie’s gone so much farther, she’s traveled, she’s lived, reached farther, lived harder, fought the Charter, acted smarter—I’m just a college kid. How did I—what am I—I lived a life’s trajectory that opportunity afforded me. On a campus visit, Silas ghosts whispered pleas, past students engendered anxiety, then charged me, _rise up, go farther and BE FREE._

In all this… do I exhibit bravery?

I’ve gone farther, gone as far as I could for some ideal that others call the greater good.

But me, I see it differently. I see it now, farther, farther behind me than it’s ever been. Farther now, it’s growing dim. Farther, a place I can leave my father and family, knowing I made it just a tiny bit better. Farther behind, my sisters, my students, those who hated me and those I gave a D can use my sacrifice as a kind of currency. To bargain, farther behind, a world or a good or a notion I can define, as something worth this, worth this bullet in front of me, worth me going farther than other students—than any, any student, should have to believe.

Farther ahead, I see them.

Farther, there’s a group of five girls.

Farther, a paper staff slaughtered.

Farther, another five.

Farther five. Farther five. Farther five. Farther-farther-farther-farther—

Sarah Jane. The first casualty in a war where other worlds are keeping score—

martyr—

The ghosts of Silas whisper all the secrets that they harbor, and yet—

Farther—girls and boys in dated attire, breeches and neckerchiefs and corsets and ascots and petticoats and Velcro sneakers and bell bottoms and Mary Janes—farther—

Grandpa Jack, with his whittled skewer at the bonfire side, burning hotter, whistling sharper and farther and sharper, ow! What is that?! Like it’s pushing into my skin farther—

Farther—

Farther—

Harper!

…

…

…

Harper Lawrence.

_Mom_.

The farther I go, the more ghosts I know.

If I push just a little bit harder, barter for more time or ride into battle on their bucking charger, I can be the Knight they never wanted, the martyr they needed, the one student in all of Silas who went farther-farther-farther—

_Laura_.

...

...

...

My friend, finish this. Someone had to be the starter and you, Laura, you’ll go farther. Knowing I left this in your hands, I don’t doubt. I’d never tell you the fears I harbor, or you might think less of me. Fight harder for this campus, with no death to sicken, argue fiercer and force Fangface to listen, hug Kirsch when you christen a campus with something akin to freedom—

I’m not sc-sc-scared.

I’m not sc—

I’m not—

I’m—mom!!!

…

…

…

_Mom_! Help me—

…

…

…

_She aims her pistol at the sky—_

 

* * *

 

 

“WAIT!” Carmilla screamed, launching herself from the confines of the tent at the edge of the green.

The recoil of an eighteenth century pistol would have sent even the most composed marksman’s arm reeling, but Mattie simply bent her elbow, the smoky smell of burnt bullet singing the air.

Carmilla was too late; Danny lurched forward as the bullet burrowed into her abdomen, nestled there, as if it were returning, as if it had been there before, as if it were always meant to be there. Carmilla gasped, gaped, her jaw working as she held Mattie’s wrist too tightly for someone who didn’t care.

_She aimed her pistol at the sky—she aimed her pistol—higher, higher than Mattie—she never intended to end it—_

Gut shot and ricochet. Somewhere in the mutilated torso. Nicking a floating rib. Tearing lung tissue.

Wouldn’t be long now.

Danny doubled over as the blood exploded from her esophagus and dribbled down her chin, an ulcer burst and staining, bloomed like unfurling morning glory petals across the white of her shirt. Breaking the eastern horizon, the sun’s first blinding rays eclipsed Danny’s convulsions like an army of light, surging forward to take back lost ground.

“DANNY!” Kirsch hollered, rushing forward and dropping to his knees, cradling her bleeding body in his lap.

“No… for fuck’s sake, Xena,” Carmilla whispered, shaking her head.

Carmilla saw LaF and the body of her former brother jogging down the hillside like a pair of gimp ponies, hustling with a doddering urgency that would be, of course, futile. The pair lugged a kit of gauze and disinfectants Carmilla knew was mainly for show, ineffectual against a wound of such severity.

“How could this have ended any differently?” Mattie chided her, brow furrowed in anger. She shook off Carmilla’s hand with indignant purpose, palming the pistol with a curious reverence.

“You wanted me dead, is that it?” she accused, but Carmilla dropped her wrist and stalked purposefully toward Danny’s paling form.

“You know that’s not it,” Carmilla spat, continuing toward the fallen’s camp.

“Mircalla, your infatuations have been tedious in the past, but these multiple conquests in the same tiresome group are bordering on inanity,” Mattie strode back toward the tent, heedless of the early hour. The pinot noir she poured sloshed up the sides of the crystal glass, stained her malicious rictus the same color as the slick ground where Danny’s blood spurted in concert with her weakening pulse.

“I can put up with a lot from you,” Mattie resumed, voice raised. “But your interest in these little humans and their—”

“She was aiming AT THE SKY, MATTIE!” Carmilla reeled around, hands out in some sort of supplication for a sin of abstention, an omission of action that left Danny bleeding out on the Silas grass.

Danny looked so… _ugh, human._ She’d never been particularly tan, given the whole ginger giant thing, but death’s wanness was crawling over her features much to quickly. She was losing _so much blood—_ rendering Carmilla was both ravenous and nauseous. Carmilla fell to her knees beside Danny and placed her hands on her stomach, pressing, an insufficient battlefield doctoring. Kirsch was useless, of course, crying like a maiden, cradling her head atop his knees.

“Xena, why—”

“I did what I—” Danny began, then hacked up a mouthful of blood.

If she hadn’t been at Death’s door, knocking, banging, ringing the bell like some annoying deliveryman, Carmilla might have licked Danny’s hand… or her cheek. Or stuck her tongue down her throat and gulped at her sweetness.

“Shhh,” Carmilla said, removing hair from her face, red strands stained redder from the stippling. Her eyes had lost their brilliance, and were fading fast to icey blue.

“I did wh-what you said,” Danny’s nostrils twitched, as if she were trying to smile, or laugh, which, in all honesty, Carmilla hadn’t seen with any genuineness in the Gingersnap since last semester.

“Shhh, sure, Red Rover, I know, I know, you did fine, okay?”

“Carm—” Kirsch tried, stroking Danny’s cheek so carefully. “Carmilla, her stomach—”

“I see it, Stud Muffin,” Carmilla glared at Kirsch: his nose was a sickening river of snot, his face a pallor of cocaine-white, his cheeks hollowed to vacancy like Danny’s own.

“I d-d-didn’t kill your sis-sis-sister,” Danny tried again, weaker and weaker, the sun shimmering brighter and lighter.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

“I know, I know,” Carmilla whispered over her, giving up the ghost of staunching any blood flow. She’d seen bloodlettings and exsanguinations in her centuries, been the perpetrator of countless gory endings. She knew, with an unforgiving certainty, that some situations were just helpless.

“Do something!” Kirsch blubbered, twisting frenetically toward LaF and Jeep, the nerdy duo standing dumbfounded around Danny’s leaking body.

“It’s c-c-cold,” Danny managed, her face contorted in a mess of twitches.

“It’s okay, Red,” Carmilla lied, lied, lied, rubbing her hands ferociously against Danny’s arms, those strong muscles reduced to flimsy yarn strings, soaking up the dew.

“Remember,” Danny gasped, as more blood dribbled from the corner of her lip. “Don’t—don’t tell—”

“ _Laura!_ ” LaF shrieked, at which point Carmilla looked toward the sun and yelped.

There was Laura and Laura’s gaping jaw, stricken expression, her tiny, fragile humanity silhouetted in the dawn. Before Carmilla could move toward her Laura had surged down the hillside, tears streaming down her cheeks, Danny’s name on her lips.

“Is-is-is-is s-s-s-she breathing?!” Laura strained for the words.

Her consonants were slurred and incomprehensible, as if the fluids in her body were rebelling against her speech. Carmilla noticed a pattern in the collective hysteria: tears and snot and spit and bile all coagulated into a heavy ball somewhere in the upper respiratory system, leaving all the humans wet and sloppy in their communication. In their unbelieving grief.

Danny was the only clear speaker; ironic, considering all the blood.

“What’s going on?!” Laura demanded, lunging to the ground on Danny’s opposite side, scrambling for Gingersnap’s long, cold fingers. “Who did this?! Is she—is she going to survive this? Who—Kirsch, Carmilla—she—did you two know?!”

“Hah—Hollis,” Danny heaved, and Carmilla noted the effort of pressure Danny expended, the tick of her ring finger against Laura’s child-like hands. “S-sorry I pulled rank. Student rep—had to be done.”

“Danny, no—”

“We worked really hard to change things—”

“Change—what do you—shh, Danny—”

“Sorry,” Danny managed, smiling hideously, the lines between her teeth thick with blood, as if she’d tortured herself with dental floss.

“No, Danny come on, you’re—you’re gonna be fine!” Laura insisted, shooting a look of such powerful desperation toward Carmilla that it could have knocked the stars from the sky, Orion on his ass and Cassiopeia from her perch. “Danny—”

“Dead girl,” Danny gurgled, the blood spewing internally, likely drowning the woman to death. “What I said.”

“I know,” Carmilla answered.

“’s only fair, Carmilla,” Danny noted, farther away than she’d been before. “—‘calla.”

“What’s fair, Xena?” Carmilla asked, transfixed by the marble column of Danny’s throat, her jugular throbbing. A single crimson drop ran from the corner of her lip and down her angular chin, over the jaw line and down her neck.

“Silas…” Danny answered, eyes crossing, the active light there stilled… extinguished. “I didn’t—kill—kill—to Mattie—Silas— _go to her._ ”

“Save your breath, Ging—Danny,” Carmilla vocalized, nearly wrenching away as Danny used the last of her life to force the vampire’s hand atop Laura’s own, linking their bloody palms with her final bit of strength.

“Protect Sil—Kirsch…love…Silas—Laura—love…y-y-you—C-Carm—”

Danny Lawrence died midsentence with her eyes open, supported by her brother, clutching the hands of two women she’d seen come together and fall apart. And Carmilla nearly wretched from the indecency of it all, the senseless sacrifice that _nobility_ and _goodness_ required.

“Uhm, guys—” LaF began warily. "You guys, she's-"

“Danny?” Laura asked, jostling the corpse gently.

“Laura, don’t—” Carmilla tried.

“You knew?!”

An accusation, not a question.

“Don’t _touch_ her!!!” Laura wailed, flinging herself across the top of Danny’s chest. “Get the hell off of her or I swear to God, Carmilla—”

“L-Laura?” Kirsch attempted.

“You, too?!” Laura demanded, quaking as she sobbed. “You all _knew_? And you didn’t stop her?! Get **the fuck** away from her!!!” she screamed, propping Danny’s torso in her lap, manhandling the woman’s body away from both Kirsch and Carmilla because, sure... Laura probably had the most right to it.

“Pity to see her go.”

Mattie.

Wine glass in one hand.

Waving a pistol about in the other, careless and irreverent.

“How does it feel to know that not just your efforts, but your _lives_ , are ineffective and meaningless in the long run?” Mattie asked.

Smug. Unapologetic. Undeniably Mattie.

“Not now, Mattie—”

“Fine, fine,” Mattie said, returning to her crystal cup. “Time to take a shot,” she polished off the rest of her wine and slipped her tongue over her lips, twirling the pistol over her finger like an innocuous paper pinwheel. “Oops, too soon?”

Mattie laughed and Carmilla paled while Laura… Carmilla just watched Laura cry.

“I tired to tell you, darling,” Mattie continued, slinking back and forth across the ground like an anaconda, mesmerizing eyes and silken voice and unrepentant, quiet fury. “Dying… it’s so human, so simple, so _easy_ ,” she holstered in flintlock pistol into the belt of her black trench coat and stared down while Carmilla focused on Laura—Laura, bereaved and covered in blood.

“Living is harder,” Mattie surmised, raking her eyes over Danny’s form. Carmilla clenched her jaw, for however long she had lived and celebrated and tortured and reveled with Mattie… she did not have the right to treat Danny’s body with such disregard. “You know well, Mircalla, that it takes a certain breed to live as—”

Mattie choked, suddenly cut off, as if unable to breathe.

“Mattie?” Carmilla asked, perplexed.

She’d never seen her sister falter in the middle of one of her lectures. She always spoke with such conviction.

Mattie took a single step forward and grabbed for the amulet at her neck. She couldn’t seem to breathe, despite breath being unnecessary. Carmilla abandoned Danny to Laura and dashed toward her sister.

“Mattie?!” Carmilla asked, catching hold as the body of her centuries-old family collapsed in her arms.

“ _Mattie!_ ” Carmilla screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glad to finally get this bit put up, since, you know, the duel was what we were going for from the beginning. One more chapter to bring it home! I'll take any critique you've got and really appreciate your readership!

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for this other than it wouldn't leave me alone. I don't actually have time to be writing it, but, again, the muse is insistent (this will likely not make much sense for anyone who hasn't been listening to historical hip-hop for the past 72 hours). Feedback always appreciated.


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